


The First Page

by theLiterator



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Aggression, Foreign Language, Frustration, Gen, Learning Difficulties, Reading
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-13
Updated: 2014-03-13
Packaged: 2018-01-15 13:47:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1307044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theLiterator/pseuds/theLiterator
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fenris has difficulties learning how to read. Hawke has difficulties... in general. Through a mixture of stubbornness, eavesdropping, and sheer force of will, they figure it out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The First Page

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Juliet316](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Juliet316/gifts).



> Originally posted here: http://fic-promptly.dreamwidth.org/2014/01/01/jan-1-2014-beginnings.html?thread=9088715#cmt9088715

He cannot-- _will not_ ask for help. It is not so simple, he thinks, as Hawke had made it out to be. There has always been the slightest hesitation in his mind between the words in Trade and the words in Tevene, so the primer that Hawke brings him with its colorful text and images of mabari doing unlikely things like gardening is less than helpful.

He supposes that this, here, is one more thing he should simply embrace, one more facet to his freedom, so he obediently sounds out the words and tries to make the jarring differences between some... spellings and their pronunciations and others make sense, but nothing can.

Still, he keeps the other book, the _first_ book, hidden among his most precious things, to be taken out and looked at whenever there is a quiet moment, when he is not bleeding or drawing blood for Hawke, when the city is not burning down around him.

He wonders, if they were closer to Tevinter, if there would be any such books for the children of magisters, with hand-painted drawings of elven slaves and their ridiculous antics. "The slave eats all the parsnips."

He knows the book is valuable; not nearly so valuable as the one about Shartan that he does not even know the title of, but costly and rare nonetheless.

He knows it came from the library in the Amell estate, that Leandra had probably learned to read herself from it.

He hates it regardless.

Hawke has the patience of kings with him, going over and over the words until he has the small book memorized, taking it away then with a proud grin and bringing him a new one, only to pinch the bridge of his nose when he realizes that's all it had been, rote memorization.

"It is not sensible, this _writing_ ," Fenris scoffs at him, shoving the book back at him. "None of it is at all how I learned to _speak it_."

"But you remember learning Trade, then?"

And oh, how he remembers. Hadriana's smile and Danariu's scowl, both had the same meaning, both held the same warning. Qun had taken longer, brought him worse pain. 

Fenris looks away, as he always does when Hawke inadvertently reminds him of those times.

"I don't understand," Hawke snaps. "You aren't _stupid_ , and this isn't _hard_."

"Leave, then!" Fenris says. "I said before that it was far too late for me to learn, and it is you who plagues me with these... these childish primers!"

Hawke jerks away. "Very well then," he says, turning on his heel and exiting the room Fenris had claimed for himself in the manor. As soon as he rounds the corner, Fenris lets all the energy drain from him, and only then realizes that he had readied his brands, had...

Threatened Hawke.

Over a book.

He stares at the abandoned childrens' book on the floor, opening it up to the first page, trying to make sense of the words written there, trying to make himself feel them, but he suspects it's that half-moment's pause between Tevene and Trade that catches him; not the sheer stubbornness Hawke implied. A few of the words make sense. The rest are simply letters on the page, black marks that he could guess at if he looked carefully at the pictures and flipped through the pages of the other book in his mind, found their match.

He kicks the book out the door, and Hawke's intake of breathe belies his presence.

He'd be annoyed if it weren't so damned predictable.

Carefully, he pulls his stash free from where it is hidden, and draws forth his book-- one not loaned to him out of some misguided attempt to save him from a past he'll never be free of, but one given simply for thoughtfulness and charity.

_His_ , he thinks, in the way little else is.

The covers are worn leather, the pages feathering with age. He opens it, and, at first he thinks it must be because he expects it to say these things, the first page is clear to him, the letters spelling out words that don't get caught in that gap between knowing and unknowing.

_"Shartan."_

It slips across his tongue without his quite realizing it, and had he noticed, he might have bit back his next words.

_"Sklavus anima,"_ he continues.

The next page he cannot read, because the text is small and cramped, and while some words are obvious, it is clear that the standard Tevene pronunciations for one or two of the letters do not line up with the Trade pronunciations Hawke taught him at all. It vexes him, but not enough to throw things, and never enough to throw _this._

Still, he sets the book reverently in it's hiding space after struggling through only a sentence (a sentence that shows that whatever Hawke may have thought when he saw the book and chose it for Fenris, he was likely correct.)

If, three weeks later, Hawke shows up with a Tevene children's book, apologies in his eyes but never in his voice, Fenris will simply be grateful that it is kittens frolicking, not slaves, on the first page.

(The kittens are, in fact, why it took three whole weeks, according to Varric after too many rounds at the Hanged Man. If Hawke had been content with slaves, it would have taken three days-- no, three _hours_!)

**Author's Note:**

> I... read this: http://archiveofourown.org/works/227715
> 
> Then I untranslated everything I had translated. Then I reworked it because I was no longer restricted to words that I could find in her guide.
> 
> Then I decided to translate those last lines which had words not extant in Katie's guide, and so I used Google translate, which told me I needed "Servus vitae" which I hated, so I went with German "Sklaven" changed the ending: "Sklavus" and then used Katie's "anima" after all.


End file.
